This week we made some great progress into Ulduar downing Leviathan, Razorscale, Deconstructor, Ignis and Kulgan. We also made a couple of attempts at the Iron Council where I discovered I can still get one shot under the right circumstances. Five bosses is a good start and I think the Iron council will fall eventually, especially when I stop letting him stand in runes of DOOM!
A primarily guild group did get this far a few weeks back but I was off in an alternate (and distinctly more nerdy) fantasy world so much of this was new for me. If I may say so myself Alassiel and I made an excellent team taking out the adds on Ignis with the help of some great healing by Farex, Ianthe and Nums. It was also very rewarding to down Ignis after failing last week and several times this week.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Making Progress (Not Bacon)
Saturday, March 7, 2009
You what Malygos?
After many failed attempts at Malygos last week I wasn’t expecting great things when I joined a PUG Tuesday evening for 10 man Eye of Eternity. To say I was pleasantly surprised when we one shotted him would be an understatement. So I can finally say that I have downed all raid cont in Wrath of the Lich King. Unfortunately as I have yet to complete heroic Oculus (I really should get around to that) I do not quite have the meta achievement.
If anyone is interested as to how it was so much easier with the PUG it comes down to two things. Firstly a Death Knight that was pulling the sparks perfectly onto each other and a Mage that topped out at 8.5k DPS which is INSANE!
Monday, February 23, 2009
Black Temple - Super Bowl of not Standing in Things
After a moderately successfully session of wiping repeatedly on Malygos and some premade PVP on Saturday night we decided to set up a Black Temple run for the following evening. Sadly we didn’t have enough guildies on to make up a full raid and ended up PUGing about a third of the raid out of trade chat. The first seven bosses were fun with the fact that nearly half the raid paid no attention to what anyone said, refused to wait for people and need rolled on items we agreed to distribute at the end merely a mild annoyance. However once we hit the Illidan council things got worse! I really shouldn’t be surprised as the stupid things people say and do when they think they are anonymous but I am. The evening was saved for me by the following comment on Wowhead for the Illidan council
“Well My friends its time for all that experence to pay off because Illidari council is the SUPER BOWL OF NOT STANDING IN THINGS!”
Sadly we did not down Illidan as we were unable to get past the second (fire elemental) phase.But it is all too easy to get caught up on things like how I will never raid or group with anyone from
Also thankyou very much to Samyell and Smeric. Sam for his very helpful information of what to expect from some of the boss fights and Smeric for handling the majority of the loot rolls. Oh and thanks to Strag for coming into Vent and keeping me sain.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Naxxramas Cleared!
After only four weeks to Wrath entering Naxxramas, Children of Stormwind raiders have completed the instance with the death of Kel’Thuzad last Sunday. With the Vault of Archavon and Obsidian Sanctum already under our belts that leaves Malygos as our only undefeated raid boss. Should we be able to consistently recreate this effort with the addition of downing Malagyos regularly we should be in a strong position to begin the next tier of raiding as soon as the patch is released.
On a related note The Children of Stormwind stand at 66th in the WowJutsu rankings. I strongly believe we can improve on this, perhaps making it into the top 50 soon!
Additionally Ironarm now has four pieces of the tier seven “Dreadnaught Plate”. Considering that even after a year of Burning Crusades Ironarm only ever managed to get two pieces of tier four this expansion is going considerably better.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Continued Raiding Success
Thanks to some on the spot raiding The Children of Stormwind now have another two raid instances under their belt. Last night a brave band of ten took on the Obsidian Sanctum and The Vault of Archavon. Both bosses fell with only one wipe each and Archavon was only really due to an evade bug and some messy taunting from myself.
The ease with which we completed both of these encounters leads me to one of two conclusions. Either raids are easier or the guild has gotten a fair bit better. I am inclined to think that perhaps it’s more of the former than the latter as there were plenty of silly mistakes made throughout the raid. Additionally although people are working to improve their play I think we still have a way to go maximising our characters performance. However that said we have improved, the guild as a whole have already attempted and begun to succeed at raid content which is a big step. We are also helping each other with crafted items and instances runs more than I saw in the Burning Crusade. Most importantly I am seeing enthusiasm again, gone are the days of running Karazhan for the hundredth time for now everything is new and exciting.
Naxxramas - The Arachnid Quarter
On the 15th of December the Children of Stormwind made their first foray into Naxxramas. The evening began with some minor trouble with the other tank and top healer being at a Christmas party but after some stumbling around we found a PUG healer and got started. The raid is made up of four parts which must be completed to unlock the final bosses. In the two hours we were there we downed the three bosses in the Arachnid Quarter, Anub'Rekhan, Grand Widow Faerlina and Maexxna. We had a few wipes on Anub’Rekkan and Maexxna as we sorted out exactly what we needed to do but the Grand Widow Faerlina when down first shot.
The six epic items dropped were all made excellent use of with Lil getting the best deal and winning two items. For a “stuck our head in and see how we do” attempt we did very successfully. We plan to try again next weekend, this time with more serious game faces and hopefully clear another wing in addition to the Arachnid.
PS Elfarol your going to hate the Arachnid wing, true to it’s name there are a lot of spiders and with you now insisting on this retribution business your going to be getting pretty close to them.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
World of Warcraft Dungeons and Raids
This panel opened with discussion about how they made sure that the dungeons tied closely to the lore of Wrath of the Lich King. Pushing the story is just as important as kills and loot. They also wanted to make shorter unique instances that still had a feel of being epic and important. They have constructed the dungeons so that they are in very large spaces but the actual playing space is smaller. There was a fly through of Halls of Lightning which showed some of the excellent detailed elements of the dungeons. One of which was windows which give you a view out into the surrounding zone and continue to give you a feel of space. Unique boss models will make bosses feel special and give them some importance.
Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom, another five man instance, again works very effectively to make you feel like you’re in a huge space. There is a lot of background story which will be new to many players from this zone. This area is where Naxxramas was originally from, you can see this in the architecture. Also if you don't like spiders you really won’t like this instance. Phasing is also used in Ahn'kahet, the last boss fight will do some really interesting things with this technology where each player will have to fight their own group in a different phase. Once you have killed all your phases enemies you can then help others meaning your healer won't hate this encounter.
Moving to raids, they are learning from and building on Burning Crusade. The first raid they discussed, Chamber of Aspects, is an expandable raid. Depending on how many of the mini bosses you take out the main boss will be easier or harder and will have different loot tables. Then they looked at Eye of the Eternity, sadly they messed up triggering the event by attempting it real time while invincible, apparently the boss knew this so wouldn't engage them... opps. Well apparently when it all starts to go to hell the Red Dragon flight turn up and help you out.
What about loot? Well Heroics will have much better loot than standard dungeons not the current situation where most of it was the same. They are also working to tweak the badge system to have two different badges allowing for purchase of different tiers of gear and avoiding people well through the end game 'farming' badges. There will also be separate gear sets for 10 and 25 man raids but they will be interchangeable for the same set bonus and a couple of these set items will be purchasable with badges.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Gruul's Lair - The Dragon Killer is Dead
Despite the new expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, being less than two months away The Children of Stormwind are still making some progress through content. Over the weekend we achieved another guild first by Downing Gruul the Dragonkiller. Despite lacking our raid leader Skyer, the run went off very well. Our only major hold up was replacing a couple of players who DCed just before Gruul and didn’t re-appear. The group wasn’t entirely from our guild, we did have a few ring in whom we are very grateful to for their assistance. The full list of participants is included below.
As the expansion approaches it seems that the Children of Stormwind is getting larger. It is a rocky time for many guilds, most are not making any progression and in many cases have completely given up on raiding. The focus for a lot of players is getting ready for the expansion. In line with this The Children of Stormwind are working on forming a progression raiding group. This team will be made up of players who consistently perform in raids. The idea is to form a core group who work well together to forge the way into Lich King ten man raids. It will also be something members can work towards if they are interested in raiding. Last week we had two great groups running side by side, this generated some amusing banter as comments were made back and forth in guild chat about their groups progress. This seemed to push people to work harder and subsequently my group got all the way to prince only skipping Nighbane, Illhoof and Netherspite.
I appologise for the quality of some of these screen shots, uploading them to Blogger seems to make them very dark and hard to see.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Zul'Aman and Gruul's Lair
Another successful venture was made into Zul’Aman on Friday night, the first three bosses down again. It would have been more successful with perhaps at least the first of the timed chests however two of the group members (including one of the healers) were plagued with disconnects one of whom eventually had to be replaced. In fact the majority of our wipes were because of the panic that enviably occurs when the main tank healer disconnects.
We also revisited 25 player raids on Sunday night with our second attempt at Gruul’s Lair. It seemed that the latency gods were not favouring us this weekend. After clearing to the High King we all sat and stared at each other running on the spot for ten minutes before the whole server restarted. Once it had we needed to reform our group, survive the large number of horde killing people out the front and then reclear. A couple of attempts later the High King fell Protaa, Myscha and Mudoken were rewarded with tier four shoulder tokens and Lililthelle with a new helm.
Sadly Gruul himself was not so easy; our best attempt got him to 5%. Once again I couldn’t seem to stay alive where Skyer managed to with Gruul pushing over 200% damage increases. The decision was made to let Skyer main tank Gruul but we ended up calling it when a mob respawned right as the pull was started. I believe there is a very good chance we can down him next time though.
A group of us also created a guild premade Warsong Gulch which was quite lucrative. We flattened several teams three to nil but our best effort was in one game were we messed up the start and let the horde capture twice only to come back with three straight captures of our own. It seems that a 19k hit point druid tank makes an excellent flag carrier.
Officer’s meetings are now being held weekly on every Monday evening, this allows us to address new and ongoing issues and generally keep in touch.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
UBRS - Another Old World Boss Down
Tonight we downed another old world boss, General Drakkisath. This was another run with Bohni and Jyade with both getting another level. However more importantly we are fleshing out Children of Stormwind's list of raid boss kills. Next stop Onyixia, Black Wing Lair and Molten Core.
On a side note, we got to see where the famous Leroy Jenkins video was filmed.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
It was also the last time Alassiel/Airora will get to come to Karazhan for a while. She is starting a new job so attending raids is going to be tricky. I hope you enjoyed your last one for a while and no sorry I am not multi boxing and playing your character through Karazhan as well.
There may have been a previous occasion when Karazhan was cleared in one night but I haven’t heard about it so sorry if that’s the case.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Gruul's Lair - The Begining
As part of our continuing the Children of Stormwind birthday celebrations, we had our first guild 25 player raid on Sunday night, our target was Gruul's Lair. There has been much discussion about starting larger raids as we have enough players so it was excellent to see 25 people giving it a shot.
High King Maulgar went down on the second attempt once we had sorted out the pull. Gruul the Dragon Killer proved more of a challenge. After many attempts and a lot of deaths (especially for poor Ironarm) we gave up.
However two healers and a tank are now sporting tier four shoulders thanks to HKM and plenty of people got to experience some thing new that they probably thought they would never get to try.
Following is a list of everyone who attended:
Iwannakillu
Primevilfury
Skyer
Steroidboy
Sellia
Alassiel
Foruce
Lililithelle
Mariandrah
Polymorf
Raynor
Sandee
Swaggy
Caldin
Paf
Elfarol
Ironarm
Mudoken
Numinor
Sando
Stragoth
Dracca
Phro
Wiste
Westrage
Tarnwho
Latheta
Thankyou everyone and lets give it another go in a month or so.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Taerar and Orgrimmar
As part of our two year birthday celebrations the Children of Stormwind took part in two more events. We took on the world dragon boss Taerar and raided various horde locations including Orgrimmar.
Taerar proved to be quite easy going down with very few deaths on the first attempt. Bohni made out quite well winning two very nice and very useful items as he is still in his 50s. In fact he got his first epic Acid Inscribed Greaves. Other items won went to level 70 characters who will hopefully not just sell them.
From there most of the raid turned south to Grom'gol Base Camp in Stranglethorn Vale. The horde camp was quickly cleared and we boarded the zeppelin. After a short detour we arrived in Durotar and headed to Orgrimmar. From here it got messy, the gates of Orgrimmar were awash with level 70 horde dueling and standing around. They quickly turned to killing us. We did take a few out but were outnumbered and our walk from the grave yard was a lot longer than there's. That pretty much spelled the end of the raid with a couple heading onto Cross Roads and Thousand Needles but most logging off or starting other things.
I did manage to do some sneaking and get inside Orgrimmar; did you know that when you are in horde cities you can see and use the trade chat channel?
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Movment of the raiding front
Downing a 25 player raid boss is really the next step for Children of Stormwind, so it would be good to see us at least attempt it. Just having a go is how we managed to finally make some progress in Zul’Aman, perhaps bitting the bullet, setting a time and trying the best we can may be all we need.
However there was one difficulty, Team Speak. On Sunday night when most of raid groups were logged into Team Speak and the guild member who hosts it was attempting to play Team Speak collapsed. The Zul’Aman group reverted to using Skype but this indicates we may not be able to have a full 25 player raid using Team Speak at once.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Zul'Aman 3/6
The Children of Stormwind pulled it together and downed three of the Zul'Aman bosses last night. Nalorakk the bear avatar went down on the third attempt, Akil'zon the eagle avatar on the forth attempt and Halazzi the lynx on the second. None of the encounters seemed particularly hard and wipes were mostly as a result of learning the encounters.
Participants were Ironarm and Skyer Tanking, Kaith, Brotherrog and Phro healing and Alassiel, Stragoth, Paf, Sellia and Swaggy as the damage dealers. The three items to drop were Pauldrons of Primal Fury from Nalorakk, Amani Punisher from Akil'zon and The Savage's Choker from Halazzi.
Personally I was very impressed, last time we tried Zul'Aman we couldn't even clear to the first boss. I had expected we would get to him this time but not three of them.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Entry Level Tanking Gear
I have chatted to a few people in Children of Stormwind about getting starter tanking gear. Most people know they need to get 490 defense etc but are not sure where to go for good gear upgrades. Therefore I have created a post which gives you some examples of easily obtainable tanking gear. You will need to mix and match carefully to ensure you are uncritable and uncrushable while trying to maintain a high level of armor. As this blog is powered by wowhead you should be able to mouse over linked items to get details, if you want more information click the item and you will be taken to the wowhead site which gives excellent detail about where and how to get the item.
Head
Felsteel Helm - Crafted by a blacksmith
Myrmidon's Headdress - reward from the quest The Warlord's Hideout
Neck
Mark of the Ravenguard - Reward from the quest Brother Against Brother
Shoulders
Shoulder Guards of the Bold - Drops in Shadow Labyrinth off Murmur
Warchief's Mantle - Reward from the quest Return to Andormu
Back
Cloak of Eternity - Crafter by a Tailor
Chest
Breastplate of the Warbringer - Reward from the quest Forge Camp: Annihilated
Jade-Skull Breastplate - Drops in The Mechanar from Nethermancer Sepethrea
Vindicator's Hauberk - Purchased from Quartermaster Endarin when revered with The Aldor
Wrist
Sha'tari Wrought Armguards - Reward from the quest The Soul Devices
Hands
Thatia's Self-Correcting Gauntlets - Drops in The Arcatraz from Dalliah the Doomsayer
Felsteel Gloves - Crafted by a blacksmith
Waist
Sha'tari Vindicator's Waistguard - Reward from the quest How to Break Into the Arcatraz
Legs
Timewarden's Leggings - Purchased from Alurmi when reverd with The Keepers of Time
Felsteel Leggings - Crafted by a balcksmith
Boots
Sha'tari Wrought Greaves - Reward from the quest Into the Heart of the Labyrinth
Rings
Andormu's Tear - Reward from the quest Hero of the Brood
Iron Band of the Unbreakable - Drops in Old Hillsbrad Foothills from Lieutenant Drake
Trinkets
Adamantine Figurine - Drops in Drops in Shadow Labyrinth off Blackheart the Inciter
Regal Protectorate - Reward from the quest Overlord
Darkmoon Card: Vengeance - Reward from the quest Darkmoon Furies Deck (Note this is an expensive quest to complete)
Weapons
Honor's Call - Purchase from Logistics Officer Ulrike when exalted with Honor Hold
Grom'tor's Charge - Quest reward from The Cipher of Damnation
Crystalline Kopesh - Quest reward from Wanted: Durn the Hungerer
Shields
Dawnforged Defender - Purchase from Eldara Dawnrunner when exalted with The Shattered Sun Offensive
Netherwing Protector's Shield - Reward from the quest Ally of the Netherwing
Merciless Gladiator's Shield Wall - Purchasable for Arena points but in the future will be available for honor
Platinum Shield of the Valorous - Drops in Shadow Labyrinth off Ambassador Hellmaw
Ranged Weapons
Melmorta's Twilight Longbow - Drops in The Black Morass from Chrono Lord Deja
Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer - Crafted by an engineer
Some Less Known of Enchants
Nethercleft Leg Armor(crafted) - Legs
Greater Inscription of Warding(Aldor Reputation)/Greater Inscription of the Knight(Scryer Reputation) - Shoulder
Glyph of the Defender(Keepers of Time Reputation) - Head
Friday, May 2, 2008
Karazhan Finally Clear
Finally we have cleared all of Karazhan. With Netherspite's timely demise the Children of Stormwind have now killed every boss. We cleared it all in one week to boot. My estimates put it at six months assuming we stared in mid November. Heres to hoping we can get through ZA a bit quicker, though I hear even those completing tier 5 content can struggle with it.
Not that I am going to stop, but I have throughly enjoyed raiding. This is only the start of the fabled "End Game" content but it has provided great challenges and wonderful rewards. Now I might go polish my epics and get some sleep.
Karazhan and beyond
Children of Stormwind how now almost cleared all of Karazhan, with only Netherspite standing in our way (here is hoping for this week). It appears that once we have bested an encounter it comes under our belt pretty easily. This has happened for Moroes, Curator and now Aran who went down quiet easily last night with virtually no deaths. For reference purposes our strategy was to keep his health below his mana, CC/burn down the elementals and not have to be polymorphed. I think that using a Paladin or Druid as an off tank and then getting them to DPS/Heal on the one tank bosses is defiantly the way to go. Having Rogadodga along is pretty handy too as his healing set it quite epic.
This leaves the question “What next?” Well there is Zul’Aman which could be interesting but with 19+ 70s simultaneously online last night 25 man raids are within our grasp. I think we should lock in a time, call in a few favours and hit Gruul’s Lair or perhaps even Magtheridon's Lair. I can think of a few 70s I am friends with who might come and at least one smallish guild who might join us. In regards to loot, well I would consider winning anything a bonus so perhaps a master looter supervising a need before greed roll off.
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